Television series
A television series ( or TV series) is a television program that is intended to be broadcast for a finite but multiple number of installments (episodes). There are many different types of television series. Television series that present fictional material are conventionally divided into comedies and dramas. In North America, the former are usually a half hour in length and the latter one hour, including the time for commercial breaks. Television series that do not present fictional material include documentary series, reality television series, gardening and cooking series, and game shows. The episodes of a television series are normally produced in batches, which typically are run sequentially for a period that is significantly less than a year. Such a batch of episodes is known in the US and Canada as a season (UK "series"). Over its lifespan, a television series may run for a number of seasons. In North America today, each season typically contains between 18 and 26 installments.With the rise of cable networks, especially pay ones, the length of seasons has been changing. Cable networks usually feature seasons lasting around thirteen episodes. Furthermore, some of them run episodes without commercial breaks. This is a reduction from the 1950s, in which many American shows had between 29 and 39 episodes per season. Commercials Actual storytelling time within a commercial television hour has also gradually reduced over the years, from 50 minutes out of every 60 in the early days down to the current maximum of 44 minutes for commercial programming in the US. The rest of the time is taken up with "commercial breaks". Today, advertisements play a role in most television programming. These "ads" (also known as "commercials") are placed in blocks in certain conventional time slots during the broadcast of an episode. Commercials may come after the title sequence, between the acts, or before the closing sequence. If the show has a "teaser" (also known as a "cold open"), this usually precedes the title sequence immediately with no interpolated commercial. If the show has a "tag", this either comes immediately after the final act, with ads before the closing sequence; or, alternatively, the ads come after the final act and the tag then directly precedes the closing sequence. The number and length of commercial breaks varies from country to country. Distribution After a television series has been filmed, it must be made available to the public. There are two basic ways in which this is done. Usually, the series is first shown on a network which has either paid for the production or been granted a license by the producers. Less frequently, a series is first shown in broadcast syndication: in that case, the program is not provided through the network system, but instead is sold to stations individually. The syndication of first-run, original programming is overshadowed by the much larger market for secondary runs of series for which no new episodes are being produced. The sale of re-runs is often handled by companies that specialize in contracting for the rights to sell the product. Re-runs are frequently edited, either to conform to local regulations about the length and number of commercial breaks, or to increase the amount of time that can be sold for advertising. ::Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Television programs. Notes Category:Terms